As It Struggles to Rebuild Itself, UFW Lauds a New Strawberry Pact

Leaders of the United Farm Workers union are touting the first major victory in a costly five-year campaign to organize workers in California’s fast-growing strawberry industry.

But as they sign a contract covering about 750 fruit pickers in Ventura County today, it remains unclear whether the achievement represents a turning point in the once-powerful organization’s struggle to rebuild itself.

UFW President Arturo Rodriguez said that if nothing else, today’s contract--which calls for a 7% raise over three years, profit-sharing bonuses and enhanced medical and dental benefits--will prove to workers across the state that joining the union will not cost them their jobs.

That’s a point the UFW has been trying to make since 1995, when another grower plowed under fields and laid off 350 workers after a successful organizing drive.

However, the story is far more complicated than a UFW triumph over grower opposition. It also involves a rival union that was created by fieldworkers with no experience, no office and no funds, who said they wanted nothing to do with the organization of Cesar Chavez.

Led by an immigrant tractor driver named Sergio Leal, the upstart Coastal Berry of California Farm Workers Committee drew more votes from workers than the UFW in a representation election in the summer of 1999.

Stunned by the setback, the UFW filed hundreds of objections, and the state farm labor board later decided to split Coastal Berry’s work force into two groups, with the larger Salinas-based group represented by the committee and a smaller faction in Oxnard represented by the UFW.

Today’s contract covers that southern faction. “I’m just really overjoyed,” Rodriguez said. “It gives us now a significant stake in the strawberry industry, and it’s an opportunity to demonstrate to employers that we can provide some real value to a relationship.”

The rival committee signed a similar contract for about 1,000 workers in Salinas in late October. Both contracts call for bonuses for high productivity--a first for the strawberry industry. The company would split the cost savings evenly with the workers.

“If they can be more efficient, we think there will be tremendous savings,” said Mark Gladstone, chairman of Coastal Berry Co. “It may change the industry. It may be very dramatic. Some of our people who were earning $8 to $8.50 an hour under the old plan may earn as much as $10 under this plan.”

In 1997, the UFW and the national AFL-CIO launched a well-publicized campaign to organize the state’s 20,000 strawberry pickers, hoping to revive the ailing farm workers organization. By some estimates--undisputed by the union--they spent more than $90,000 a month on the effort.

The drive was fiercely resisted by the industry. Among other things, strawberry growers funded sham unions. They also improved wages and working conditions to blunt worker complaints.

But Coastal Berry, under new ownership in 1998, agreed to take a neutral stance toward the UFW. As a result, Gladstone said, the company was snubbed by banks and landowners and sued by members of an industry group, the Western Growers Assn. Coastal Berry won that lawsuit.

Now that a contract is about to be signed, Gladstone said other growers have expressed concern that a union label on Coastal Berry products will give it a competitive advantage. “The industry is watching to see if the UFW will or can do anything to enhance our selling of strawberries,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s going to make any difference.”

Coastal Berry is one of the largest strawberry growers in the nation, with about $850 million in sales and 2,600 employees. It represents about 11% of the market.

Meanwhile, Leal of the rival committee said he was pleased that both contracts were essentially equal, and said he hopes the rancor of the last few years is behind everyone. “I just want to work and be left alone,” said Leal, who conceded he is no fan of unions, particularly the UFW.

In another strange twist, Leal’s committee was represented in negotiations by James Lorenz, a Berkeley attorney who once worked with Cesar Chavez. “I’m a maverick,” Lorenz said. “Other farm workers are entitled to representation too. I’ve always liked the underdog, and now they’re the underdog.”

Lorenz said the committee had no plans to organize other California workers. “We’ve got parity now, and I think that’s great,” he said. “We shouldn’t have competition [between unions]. That’s destabilizing, and leads us right back to where we all were a year ago.”